Perception as Information Detection: Reflections on Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception

355 Pages·2019·29.134 MB·English

by  Jeffrey B Wagman, Julia J C Blau

Perception as Information Detection
This book provides a chapter- by-chapter update to and reflection on the
landmark volume by J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Per-
ception (1979/2015).
Gibson’s book was presented as a pioneering approach in experimental
psychology; it was his most complete and mature description of the ecolo-
gical approach to visual perception. Perception as Information Detection
commemorates, develops, and updates each of the 16 chapters in Gibson’s
original volume. The book brings together some of the foremost perceptual
scientists in the field, from the United States, Europe, and Asia, to reflect
on Gibson’s original chapters, expand on the key concepts discussed and
relate this to their own cutting- edge research. This connects Gibson’s
classic with the current state of the field, as well as providing a new gener-
ation of students with a contemporary overview of the ecological approach
to visual perception.
This book is an important resource for perceptual scientists as well as
both undergraduates and graduates studying sensation and perception,
vision, cognitive science, ecological psychology, and philosophy of mind.
Jeffrey B. Wagman is Professor of Psychology at Illinois State University,
Normal, IL, USA. His research focuses on perception of affordances. He is
a recipient of the Illinois State University Outstanding University
Researcher Award and a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Invita-
tion Fellowship for Research in Japan. He is an Associate Editor of the
journal Ecological Psychology.
Julia J. C. Blau is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Central Con-
necticut State University, New Britain, CT, USA. She earned her doctorate
in ecological psychology from the University of Connecticut. Her research
focuses on the fractality of event perception, as well as the ecological
approach to film perception.
Resources for Ecological Psychology
A series of volumes edited by Jeffrey B. Wagman and
Julia J. C. Blau
[Robert E. Shaw, William M. Mace, and Michael Turvey,
Series Editors Emeriti]
Social and Applied Aspects of Perceiving Faces
Alley
Perception and Control of Self-M otion
Warren/Werthiem
Michotte’s Experimental Phenomenology
Thinès/Costall/Butterworth
Perceiving Events and Objects
Jannson/Bergstrōm/Epstein
Global Perspectives on the Ecology of Human- Machine Systems
(Volume 1)
Flach/Hancock/Caird/Vicente
Local Applications of the Ecological Approach to Human- Machine
Systems (Volume 2)
Hancock/Flach/Caird/Vicente
Dexterity and Its Development
Bernstein/Latash/Turvey
Ecological Psychology in Context
James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James’s Radical
Empiricism
Heft
Perception as Information Detection
Reflections on Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Wagman/Blau
Perception as Information
Detection
Reflections on Gibson’s Ecological
Approach to Visual Perception
Edited by Jeffrey B. Wagman and
Julia J. C. Blau
First edition published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors Jeffrey B. Wagman and Julia J. C. Blau to be
identified as the authors of the editorial matter, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Names: Wagman, Jeffrey B., editor. | Blau, Julia J. C., 1982- editor.
Title: Perception as information detection : reflections on Gibson’s
Ecological approach to visual perception / edited by Jeffrey B.
Wagman and Julia J.C. Blau.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Resources
for ecological psychology | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019014293 (print) | LCCN 2019016466 (ebook)
| ISBN 9780429316128 (eBook) | ISBN 9780367312954 (hardback)
| ISBN 9780367312961 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Gibson, James J. (James Jerome), 1904-1979.
Ecological approach to visual perception. | Visual perception. |
Environmental psychology.
Classification: LCC BF241.G48 (ebook) | LCC BF241.G48 P47 2020
(print) | DDC 152.14–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014293
ISBN: 978-0-367-31295-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-31296-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-31612-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
List of Contributors xi
Foreword: Resources for Ecological Psychology xiii
Preface xiv
Introduction 1
JEFFREY B. WAGMAN AND JULIA J. C. BLAU
PARt I
the Environment to Be Perceived 3
1 the third Sense of Environment 5
EDWARD BAGGS AND ANTHONY CHEMERO
2 the triad of Medium, Substance, and Surfaces for the
theory of Further Scrutiny 21
TETSUSHI NONAkA
3 Ecological Interface Design Inspired by “the Meaningful
Environment” 37
CHRISTOPHER C. PAGANO AND BRIAN DAY
4 Challenging the Axioms of Perception: the Retinal Image
and the Visibility of Light 51
CLAUDIA CARELLO AND MICHAEL T. TURVEY
vi Contents
PARt II
the Information for Visual Perception 71
5 Getting into the Ambient Optic Array and What We Might
Get Out of It 73
WILLIAM M. MACE
6 the Challenge of an Ecological Approach to Event
Perception: How to Obtain Forceful Control from Forceless
Information 90
ROBERT SHAW AND JEFFREY kINSELLA- SHAW
7 the Optical Information for Self-P erception in
Development 110
AUDREY L. H. VAN DER MEER AND F. R. RUUD VAN DER WEEL
8 A Guided tour of Gibson’s theory of Affordances 130
JEFFREY B. WAGMAN
PARt III
Visual Perception 149
9 Perceiving Surface Layout: Ground theory, Affordances,
and the Objects of Perception 151
WILLIAM H. WARREN
10 Acting Is Perceiving: Experiments on Perception of Motion
in the World and Movements of the Self, an Update 174
L. JAMES SMART JR., JUSTIN A. HASSEBROCk, AND
MAX A. TEAFORD
11 Revisiting “the Discovery of the Occluding Edge and Its
Implications for Perception” 40 Years On 188
HARRY HEFT
12 Looking with the Head and Eyes 205
JOHN M. FRANCHAk
13 James Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Locomotion and
Manipulation: Development and Changing Affordances 222
kAREN E. ADOLPH, JUSTINE E. HOCH, AND ORI OSSMY
Contents vii
14 Information and Its Detection: the Consequences of
Gibson’s theory of Information Pickup 237
BRANDON J. THOMAS, MICHAEL A. RILEY, AND
JEFFREY B. WAGMAN
PARt IV
Depiction 253
15 the Use and Uses of Depiction 255
THOMAS A. STOFFREGEN
16 Revisiting Ecological Film theory 274
JULIA J. C. BLAU
References 291
Index 333
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Water velocity 60 s after an 86 mm- long fish (Lepomis
gibbosus) passed the area 26
2.2 (a) Typical posture and movement of craftsmen during
stone bead production. (b) Examples of ellipsoidal glass
beads produced by expert (HQ) and non-e xpert (LQ)
craftsmen. (c) Singularity spectrum estimated for expert
(HQ) and non-e xpert (LQ) craftsmen 28
2.3 (a) Ventral surface of a flake detached by conchoidal
fracture. (b) Flake terminology 31
2.4 Re- fitted elongated ovate fine-g rained porphyritic
phonolite cobble from Lokalalei 2C 33
3.1 A hand feeling a pair of scissors 42
4.1 (a) A diverging pencil of rays from a single reflecting point.
(b) A few converging cones show how an optical image could
be built from an infinite number of points on the object 53
4.2 The demonstration of a “retinal image” by Scheiner 56
4.3 Illumination is transparent to that which is illuminated 61
4.4 (a) Three holes drilled in a plywood box provided an
illumination shaft. (b) Rods angled obliquely directly in
front of the viewing aperture of the box 63
4.5 Photographs taken through the viewing aperture 63
4.6 Newton revisited 64
4.7 (a) Box with interior reflecting surfaces. (b) A top view
schematic of the light in the interior of the foam- lined
box. (c) A top view schematic of the light in the interior
of the box shown in (a) 65
4.8 Light reflected from spacewalkers: observations 67
5.1 Pike’s Peak, Barr Trail 76
5.2 Ambient optic array diagrams 77
6.1 The transformation of the optic array defined by a
locomotor movement 94
Illustrations ix
6.2 Illustrating the dual components of an ecosystem 101
6.3 The dual frame discrepancy hypothesis 105
6.4 Lee’s swinging room 106
7.1 A newborn baby participating in the weight- lifting
experiment 112
7.2 A newborn boy only a few hours old is studying his
hand intensely 115
7.3 A 4-month- old girl in deep concentration on the visual
motion presented on the screen in front of her 122
7.4 Accelerating looming stimulus approaching the infants’
eyes resulting in increased theta-b and oscillatory activity
in the visual cortex of the extrinsic loom 126
8.1 Surfaces and affordances as interfaces 131
8.2 Affordances for support 133
8.3 Objects that afford sitting on (by humans) 134
8.4 Many animal species perceive affordances for reaching 135
8.5 Performing a given behavior creates and eliminates
affordances 137
8.6 Relationship between physics and geometry and
perception- action in standard (top) and ecological
(bottom) approaches 139
8.7 Objects that afford grasping with one hand and with
two hands 141
8.8 Perceptual experience vs. artificial measurement (M)
devices 142
9.1 The horizon ratio 154
9.2 Geometry of the ground theory 155
9.3 Ground texture as an intrinsic scale for relative
exocentric size and distance 157
9.4 Distance perception: experimental tasks, representative
data, and the results of numerical simulation based on
Equations 9.1 and 9.3 160
10.1 Depiction of the moving room used in Stoffregen and
Smart (1998) and Smart, Stoffregen, and Bardy (2002) 179
10.2 (a) Depiction of the virtual hallway stimuli used by
Warren, kay, and Yilmaz (1996). (b) Depiction of large
screen projection of optic flow (sinusoidal) used in
Dijkstra, Schöner, and Gielen (1994) 181
10.3 Set- up and depiction of study for Littman (2011) 184
10.4 Potential alteration of perception and action when using VE 185
10.5 Depictions of optic flow conditions used in Smart et al.
(2014) 186
12.1 (a) Mobile eye tracker devised by Land (1992).
(b) Simultaneous eye and field of view recording for
tracking eye gaze 208